


Romeo and Juliet || Why Must All Good Things Come To An End?

by lilolilyrae



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, F/F, M/M, Suicide, World War III
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-07 06:53:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26468995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilolilyrae/pseuds/lilolilyrae
Summary: Andromache would have really expected to be the first to go.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 10
Kudos: 66





	Romeo and Juliet || Why Must All Good Things Come To An End?

**Author's Note:**

> More warnings and spoilers for which characters die in the end notes!
> 
> Can be seen as a continuation of any of my fanfics where they find out that Andy gets her immortality back once she decides she wants to live again.

They are on a mission greater than them, trying to stop a war that might be greater than any they have lived through before.

They are scared, every last one of them even if they don't want to admit it. If this goes wrong- if, in the end, the entire planet ends up in rubble, with only them left inhabiting it- what are they going to do? 

Wither away?

Opt to turn mortal the way Nile has? 

She's on this mission, one last time, despite her now greying hair.

Andy draws a knife over her arm, just to see it bleed and heal again.

Next to her, Quynh is doing the same.

Whatever happens, they will stand this out together.

Booker is in the bunker with Nile- it's their headquarter in America- organising their communication, trying to intercept communication of others that might speed things up before they can kill the correct people in power, the ones behind all this.

Nicky's in Europe, trying to assassinate a president and his second in command in one go, as anything else might just make things worse.

Joe's in Africa, already having taken out two people and waiting for the signal on the third.

Andy and Quynh got Asia, moving from one country to the next trying to detangle the lines of power and influence, trying to figure out what's _wrong_ , waiting for Nile's signal that they can take out one leader or another. 

They never get another signal.

When the earth shakes, Quynh is jumping back, looking for Andy who is frozen in her tracks.

This is no earthquake.

She hadn't been close enough to the bombs of the second world war, but she had heard people describe it...

Joe turns around for Nicky, only to remember that he isn't with him right now.

That means he's safe, right?

If Yusuf was close enough to feel the bomb, surely Nicolo, on another continent entirely, must be safe?

Nile and Booker, one so much older than he looks, one so much younger than the others despite her looks, stare at each other when they see the feeds explode with the news.

No.

No, this can't be happening. 

Andy and Quynh answer their phones immediately when Nile calls.

Joe calls them from a pay phone once he reached a country that still has some sort of connection. 

Booker keeps them all posted, who they've reached already, who's still AWOL... 

Nicky never answers his phone.

It might just take longer for him to put himself back together, right?

He was right at the centre of the explosion. 

It will just take a bit longer than a few moments or minutes this time, right? 

And then he still has to find a phone to reach them.

Yusuf tries to tell himself that everything will be fine.

Tries not to curse Andromache and Quynh for getting the part of the mission that kept them together- of course they did, they just found each other again, it would be cruel to pry them apart...

Nicolo, his heart, his soul, is going to be just fine, he is going to be able to draw him into his arms again, reassure himself that it is fine... 

After the world calms down enough to realise what terrible thing has happened, the war is ended just two days after it so violently began.

The next days, weeks, months, are slow-going.

Survivors are being rescued from the edges of the explosion.

Water and electricity slowly reconnected.

Supplies brought by professionals in rescue gear and volunteers.

Nicky still doesn't call.

Andy, Quynh and Joe take a private plane to the area they had lost contact to Nicky in as soon as it is save enough to do so.

Nile and Sebastian stay in the bunker, making sure to be reachable.

In case Nicolo calls.

The longest anyone had ever taken to wake up again had been Andy, who stepped on a grenade once.

She had woken within days, fully healed within a week.

This was a different kind of bomb.

It takes them a while- Joe doesn't bother to try and count the days or months, doesn't even try to sleep each night to keep a rhythm in which he would count days automatically- but they search through the rubble, look through all of the bodies.

No Nicolo.

Joe keeps searching for him, half in a craze, half aware enough to know that he would go fully insane if he didn't cling to the hope, if he didn't keep looking, while the others start to grieve.

Andromache does not let go of Quynh for a month, does not let her out of her sight for a year.

Nile, almost eighty and _exhausted_ , dies in her sleep one day.

Booker is almost grateful for the excuse to grieve openly, for someone really and obviously dead, instead of the uncertainty with Nicolo.

Joe barely registers the news.

He keeps looking.

It takes him years, but he has looked under every fallen building, through every metre of the dust in the centre of the explosion, through all of the bodies yet again.

Nicky is never there, neither alive or dead.

Joe has seen videos with simulations of such a bomb.

Knows how, in the centre of it, not much is left of a person.

Is that what happened to his Nicolo? 

Nothing left but dust, atoms, particles in the wind, no DNA left to re-build his immortal body?

He starts hoping that Nicolo's soul left the explosion intact instead of hoping to find his body.

Starts hoping that Nicolo found his God in death.

For a while, Yusuf just sits somewhere, staring at the stars.

They hadn't been this bright in centuries.

No light pollution in the rubble

He doesn't want to live without his other half.

It takes him a while to even realise what has already been true for days at that point.

He doesn't want to _live_ anymore.

Staring, unmoving, unthinking into space, he only realises something has changed when he feels the thirst in his throat, and it doesn't go away.

It is almost a relief to take his gun into his hand.

Quynh and Andy try not to worry when Joe stops answering their calls.

He's grieving, of course he is.

But does it mean they have lost another one of their own?

Before, Andy had cursed the existence of cameras on every street corner.

Now, she wishes there was one to check up on Yusuf with.

They find his body in the vast landscape left by the explosion, unmoving with his finger on the trigger of his favorite gun.

Not knowing where to bury him- they never did speak much about what to do should their true death come- they decide to take him back home, to bury on the cemetery next to Nile.

The stench of death is sickening on the plane, and the decay of his body is really driving the point home that he is never coming back.

Years go by, and Quynh and Andy do their best to help rebuild the world, glad to be able to cling to each other instead of a bottle of alcohol the way Booker constantly does nowadays. 

Years and months and years.

Almost a decade.

The old phone line isn't really used by anyone anymore when it finally rings.

Andromache of Scythia hasn't cried about a death since her own first, but when Nicolo di Genova falls into his sword at his husband's grave and doesn't get up again, the tears fall freely from her face.

Sadness, anger, desperation.

How unnecessary it all was.

She doesn't believe in God or the afterlife, but for their sake she hopes they are finally together again in the end.

Quynh swears she will never kill herself until a hundred years have gone by after Andromache's death.

Andy adds that she will only do it if she has Quynh's lifeless body in front of herself.

They both know they will probably wait longer yet, should something like this happen to them. 

And if they ever want to leave this life-

If the grieve gets too much, the world changed too much, they can't see a purpose anymore-

They will wait for each other, and then they will go together, the way they were meant to.

**Author's Note:**

> _Spoilery warnings:  
>  Death of Joe and Nicky  
> Mortal Nile, Death of Nile  
> War, Violence  
> Atomic bombs_
> 
> I made myself cry writing this.
> 
> Happier fics [here](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1914259)!


End file.
